Hey, folks! I've recently finished working on a shiny new edition of the
Engines & Empires Core Rules for OSR steampunk and gaslamp fantasy campaigns!
What's new in this new edition? Well, compared to the previous release from 2017, only a few things have changed, mostly to make the game feel even more like OD&D.
• There are now five classes: the fighter, rogue, scholar, mage, and tech. Fighters fight, rogues gamble, mages make with the hocus-pocus, scholars do the Dr Van Helsing thing, and techs build all the gizmos.
• The game has been made more old-school in subtle ways. I've stripped critical hits out of the rules entirely. Demi-humans have race-classes again, and they're level-limited. There are no longer any d20 attribute checks; instead, the attribute scores are there mainly to serve as prime requisites for the character classes. Yes, prime requisites are back! And the d6-based skill system from the original version of Engines & Empires has been brought back in its entirety.
• That said, E&E still uses the Le Guinian magic system and the full array of tech inventions which have been written to be balanced against it. There have been minor revisions to the weapons and major revisions to the magical items; some whole categories of monsters have gone untouched, while others have gotten a bit of a mechanical overhaul. Undead, in particular, are now much more streamlined: no more drain mechanics. Instead, the undead inspire magical fear!
